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331. NATO's Comprehensive Approach to Crisis Response Operations: A Work in Slow Progress

Author:
Peter Viggo Jakobsen
Publication Date:
11-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The aims of this report are to analyse the evolution of the Alliance's Comprehensive Approach (CA) to date, to identify the principal obstacles standing in the way of further progress and to suggest how they can be overcome or circumvented. CA is based on the premise that operations aimed at creating a sustainable peace must employ the relevant civilian and military instruments in a coordinated and concerted manner in order to succeed. Ideally, the civilian and military actors involved in such operations should agree on the political end-state and engage in the joint planning, execution and evaluation of their operational activities in order to achieve it. Since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) does not have the civilian capacities that a fully-fledged CA requires, the Alliance is faced with a dual challenge as it seeks to develop its contribution to CA. It must get its own house in order by creating a common understanding of its role in CA, as well as the mindset, doctrine and procedures that will enable it to employ its own resources in accordance with CA requirements for success. In addition, it must also develop an understanding of and cooperative relationships with the organizations and local actors it is likely to cooperate with in the field. NATO must, in short, conduct its own activities in accordance with CA requirements, and at the same time be both willing and able to plug and play with other actors who can bring to the table the capacities that are required to meet the political objectives of a given operation.
Topic:
Security and NATO

332. Climate of Displacement, Climate for Protection?

Author:
Vikram Kolmannskog
Publication Date:
12-2008
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This article looks at existing categories of forced migrants in the context of climate change to analyse protection possibilities. Climate change impacts include an increase in the frequency and severity of weather hazards. Disasters and degradation can serve as a direct cause of displacement, or as an indirect cause of displacement through conflicts. Much climate change-related forced migration is likely to remain internal and regional in the foreseeable future. As internally displaced persons the forced migrants are protected according to the 1998 Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. For those who cross borders and enter other counties, there seems to be a serious protection gap. They are not considered refugees unless they are fleeing persecution on certain grounds. The human rights approach differs from general forced migration law by focusing on needs rather than cause. If return is neither possible nor reasonable due to circumstances in the place of origin and personal conditions including particular vulnerabilities, a person should receive protection regardless of the initial cause of movement. Some countries grant complementary or temporary protection. An important rationale for international protection is that some of the most exposed and vulnerable states to climate change impacts may be unwilling or unable to protect the forced migrants. Other countries may also have a responsibility since climate change is mostly the fault of the rich and developed countries. Since most of the affected and displaced will never reach the rich countries, this responsibility must also manifest itself through investments in adaptation in developing countries and other support for the most affected, including humanitarian response.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, and Migration

333. Between Bureaucracy and the People: A Political History of Informality

Author:
Keith Hart
Publication Date:
11-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
I explore here the dialectic of formal and informal economy in the context of 'development' discourse over the last four decades. It would not be hard, in post-colonial Africa for example, to conceive of this dialectic as a war waged by the bureaucracy on the people, allowing informal economic practices to be portrayed as a kind of democratic resistance. Yet, however much we might endorse the political value of self-organized economic activities, there are tasks of large-scale co-ordination for which bureaucracy is well-suited; and the institution's origins were closely linked to aspirations for political equality, even if historical experience has undermined that expectation. So the task is not only to find practical ways of harnessing the complementary potential of bureaucracy and informality, but also to advance thinking about their dialectical movement.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Africa

334. 'Cast the Net Wider': How a Vision of Global Halal Markets is Overcoming Network Envy

Author:
Johan Fischer
Publication Date:
11-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper explores Malaysia's bid to become the world leader in rapidly expanding halal (lawful or permitted) markets on a global scale. Over the last three decades, a powerful state nationalism has emerged, represented by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the dominant political party in Malaysia. The state has effectively certified standardised and bureaucratised Malaysian halal production, trade and consumption. Now, the vision is to export this model, and for that purpose the network as a strategic metaphor is being evoked to signify connectedness and prescriptions of organisation vis-à-vis more deep-rooted networks. Building on empirical material from research in Malaysia and Britain, I shall show how networks are understood and practised in a metaphorical sense.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
Britain, Malaysia, and Asia

335. Shifting Financial Flows to Low-Income Countries: From Official Aid to Private Finance?

Author:
Lotte Thomsen
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Within the last decades, the share of government aid in overall external financial flows to developing countries has decreased. It is estimated that between 75 and 85% of all current financial flows to developing countries derive from a variety of private sources, including remittances, investment, commercial loans and charity, compared to some 65% in 1990 (see also Jones, 2007). Similarly, it has been estimated that total private flows reached 647 billion USD in 2006, which is roughly four times their level in the 1980s. This may imply a diminished or different role for official financing from 'traditional' donors, at least in relative terms (Dorsey et al, 2008; Steer, 2008). Yet, it has been pointed out (Steer, 2008) that the size, impact and relation of private financial flows to public flows are not fully understood, not least because monitoring systems in many developing countries are rudimentary, and e.g. FDI widely underestimated. Simultaneously with this increase in private finance to developing countries, the number of both private and public aid sources, including bilateral donor channels, multilateral organizations, funds and programmes, have been growing so that they now are higher in number than the number of developing countries they are created to assist (IDA, 2007).
Topic:
Development, Emerging Markets, Government, and Non-Governmental Organization

336. Localizing Private Social Standards: Standard Initiatives in Kenyan Cut Flowers

Author:
Lone Riisgaard
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Since the mid-1990s a range of Southern social standard initiatives have emerged, including in the African horticultural industry. In this paper I analyse two Kenyan standard initiatives in the cut flower sector – a business initiative and a multistakeholder initiative. I investigate how inter-national social standard requirements are 'localized', and how standards are played in different ways by different stakeholders in order to gain influence and to further specific goals. The analysis shows that when the standards are negotiated and performed, the power relations that exist both between local stakeholders and along the global value chain (GVC) for cut flowers are reflected and reproduced. The analysis further reveals a general tension between a focus on private social standards (PSSs) as a technical tool to achieve social compliance based on outcome standards, and a focus on PSSs as a means of enhancing the process through which workers claim their rights. This tension is clearly reflected in the fact that when the multistakeholder standard is endorsed by other local standard initiatives, it is to the exclusion of the multistakeholder institution and to the exclusion of the participatory auditing methodology – the main vehicle through which process rights are promoted. Placing the local standard initiatives in the context of GVC governance, this paper also illustrates how local standard initiatives can be seen as indirectly playing into the governance agenda of retail buyers, because local standards (particularly multistakeholder standards) offer better insurance against conflict and create necessary consensus and 'back-up' from critical voices, both locally and in buyer markets.
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa

337. "Bringing in the Americans?" – Assessing EU And U.S. Post-Kyoto Policies Options towards a Copenhagen Protocol in 2009

Author:
Christian Hald-Mortensen
Publication Date:
08-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Bringing in the Americans is the first task for the UN-COP-15 for the Danish government along with its EU partners. The key contents of the EU's climate leadership towards the climate conference are assessed, such as the-20% by 2020 reduction target, the effort sharing agreement and reforms of the European Trading Scheme. EU climate leadership is both based on strong public support and economic features such as a lower energy intensity of production than the U.S. The EU and Danish strategy converge in promoting the concept of a "low-carbon economy", based on first-mover advantage exports in renewables technology, such as wind power. The contents of the "Danish example" are assessed; decoupling economic growth and emissions within a "lowcarbon economy"-storyline.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, Treaties and Agreements, and United Nations
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Europe

338. South Africa's Medical Brain Drain: Myths, Facts and What (not) to do

Author:
Jon Mortensen
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
A global shortage of health professionals makes it relatively easy for doctors and nurses from poor countries to emigrate to rich countries. This has raised fears of a medical brain drain from poor to rich countries and has been the subject of much – impassioned – debate. This paper questions the underlying rational behind South Africa's current policies toward the medical brain drain. In doing so, it also challenges the dominating view on the medical brain drain: that out-migration of health workers from developing countries has damaging consequences and curbing that migration is pivotal in safeguarding developing countries' health systems. A view which is rooted in a perhaps intuitively convincing assumption that out-migration and low levels of health workers are tightly correlated – that outward migration causes low levels of health workers in South Africa and elsewhere.
Topic:
Health and Migration
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

339. A Strategic Framework and Toolbox for Action Research with Small Producers in Value Chains

Author:
Lone Riisgaard, Simon Bolwig, Stefano Ponte, Frank Matose, Andries du Toit, and Niels Halberg
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The paper presents a strategic and practical guide for how to design and implement action research in value chains in a way that integrates poverty, environmental and gender concerns. The focus is on small producers in developing countries and other weak chain actors such as small trading and processing firms.
Topic:
Economics, Environment, Gender Issues, Markets, and Poverty

340. Rules of Origin and the European Union's Preferential Trade Agreements, with Special Reference to the EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements

Author:
Peter Gibbon
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Economic opinion is in the process of re-interpreting low levels of uptake of non-reciprocal preferential trade agreements (PTAs) partly in terms of administrative barriers to preference utilization. Primary amongst these barriers are Rules of Origin. This paper reviews the literature on Rules of Origin as administrative barriers to the utilization of preferences accorded to African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries under the Coutonou Agreement, before going on to ex-amine current revisions of EU PTA Rules of Origin. These are embodied in a new (so-called 'Cotonou+') set of rules for the interim EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) and a second proposed set of rules for the EU's Generalised System of Preference (GSP) arrangements, including Everything But Arms. The Cotonou+ rules include some important concessions by the EU, especially for those ACP countries that do not have Least Developed Country (LDC) status, but are supposed to be re-negotiated within a fixed period in line the new EU GSP rules. However, the new GSP rules as revealed in the EU Draft Regulation of 2007 contain no real concessions for non-LDCs, and they introduce potentially trade-restrictive administrative requirements. These rules are currently (July 2008) under reconsideration by the EU, but it is clear that this exercise does not cover these elements. For this reason, harmonisation of the Cotonou+ and new GSP rules may be a source a serious discord in the negotiation of full EPAs, a process which is supposed to occur during 2008.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Africa and Caribbean